Press

“As currently written, SB 1 will put Ohio’s world-class system of higher education at risk by stifling academic freedom, raising administrative costs, impeding recruitment and retention of talented faculty, and pushing more young adults out of Ohio,” said Melissa Cropper, OFT President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Ohio AFL-CIO. “The Senate can avert the worst of these risks by taking the time to consider amendments and make this bill better.”

“For more than twenty years, Ohio families have dealt with insufficient school funding. Parents, students, and educators have been asked to do more and more with less and less. The Fair School Funding Formula was designed to fund education based on what that education actually cost. Over the past four years, we have gotten closer to the goal of a fairly funded education system. The refusal to use current costs in the formula undercuts the Fair School Funding Formula as a whole by using old data to calculate financing for current expenses.  We are confident that the people of Ohio want their schools to be funded at levels that will afford all children the opportunity to live up to their potential, and we look forward to working with Gov. DeWine and the Ohio legislature to make that happen with a fair and fully funded formula.”

"Ohio has world class colleges and universities because Ohio has world class higher education students, faculty, and staff. We deserve legislators who will work with us to solve problems like rising tuition and keep Ohio colleges and universities competitive in our region and in the world. SB 1 doesn’t do anything like that. Instead it uses culture war politics to attack workers’ rights and turn campuses into hostile environments for people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities."

“HB 8 is a mess of a bill that will jeopardize student health and safety, lower the quality of the education that Ohio students receive, and dissuade people and businesses from moving to – or remaining in – Ohio.

This legislature seems to think that it's their job to micromanage what books are in a classroom, force teachers to put students in danger by outing them, and require schools to allow students to leave during the schoolday for religious instruction. Ohio parents and communities want to, and are capable of, continuing to make these decisions locally for their individual school districts. We hope that Governor DeWine will veto this bill and push back against the one-size-fits-all unfunded mandates from the statehouse.”

Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper released the following statement about SB 104:  “Every child deserves a safe and welcoming learning environment. We have been dismayed in recent years as extremist legislators have pushed for laws that target, intimidate, and harass trans and non-binary students. They do so at the expense of actually solving the real problems that students and educators face..."

COLUMBUS — Sara Kilpatrick, Executive Director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (OCAAUP), and Melissa Cropper, President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, released the following statement in response to baseless, politically-motivated accusations against Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum, an STRS Board member since 2021:

“On Wednesday, May 15, the Ohio Attorney General filed a frivolous lawsuit claiming that STRS Board Member Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum breached his fiduciary duties and therefore must be removed from his position on the Retirement Board. The lawsuit arrived on the heels of anonymous, spurious allegations made against Dr. Fichtenbaum, which he thoroughly rebutted in a public statement."

UPPER ARLINGTON, OH — Today, a strong majority of staff at Upper Arlington Public Library (UAPL) voted to form their union, Upper Arlington Public Library United Staff (UAPLUS), in a secret ballot election administered by Ohio’s State Employment Relations Board. The new union, which includes around 90 librarians and library workers, is the fourth group of Central Ohio library workers to successfully organize with the Ohio Federation of Teachers since 2021.

“Every Ohio student, no matter what they look like or how they identify, deserves respect and an equal opportunity. HB 68, particularly the ban on allowing trans students to participate in sports teams with their gender, flies in the face of this goal by writing discrimination into the law and targeting some of Ohio’s most vulnerable students."

Today, leaders from the All in For Ohio Kids coalition responded to the biennial budget passed by the Ohio General Assembly: “Ohio students deserve fully funded, high quality, local public schools that help them reach their fullest potential, and it is the responsibility of our state legislators to enact a system that achieves this."

The Ohio Federation of Teachers sent the following letter to Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber in response to his office's actions to investigate school district spending on voucher litigation. We are asking Auditor Faber to instead investigate the use of public education dollars on union-busting at Ohio charter schools.